Available at this blog is a paper on Lucky Come Hawaii that Sheldon Hershinow wrote as a humanities scholar for the 2010 “Celebrate Reading” festival. Please click on the Box.net widget in the right column to download the paper. Here is the opening paragraph:

The Japanese “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor demolished the U.S. fleet, killing over 2000 military personnel and 70 civilians, and brought the United States into World War II. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s unforgettable designation of December 7, 1941 as a “date which will live in infamy” galvanized the country. The horror of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought about a rush of patriotism. Men from across America volunteered for military service. Women joined the workforce to replace them. Food rationing was imposed. For four years virtually all aspects of American life were focused on the war effort. But for Japanese-Americans, Pearl Harbor caused a very different kind of horror. Within hours of the attack, hundreds of Japanese American leaders as well as Japanese fishermen were rounded up and brought to high security camps. Later, over 110,000 Japanese Americans, including United States citizens, were relocated to internment camps in what historian Allan Winkler has been called “the greatest violation of civil liberties in the history of the United States.” Anyone with Japanese roots was suspected of being a spy.